Aircraft often employ flight management systems to assist with navigating aircraft in a manner to save time, fuel, etc. in traveling from an origin to a destination. A navigation solution implemented by a flight management system can process signals from various sources (e.g., GPS satellites, attitude sensors, etc.) to determine a velocity and attitude (e.g., orientation) of the aircraft during flight. In some examples, the attitude and the translation (e.g., position and velocity) of the aircraft are determined separately using separate algorithms. For instance, position and velocity can be determined by processing GPS signals (or other satellite based positioning signals). Attitude can be determined using various attitude sensors, such as inertial measurement units (IMUS) and/or other signal receivers.
Flight management systems often implement navigation solutions that take into account geodesic factors, such as magnetic variation of the Earth, which can vary in magnitude and direction as the magnetic field is ever changing. In addition, flying by the poles can involve a wander angle (e.g., angle with respect to north) having a 90° angle which induces a computational error because a trigonometric tangent function is used, and the tangent of 90′ is considered infinity. This can be addressed using parameterization methods, leading to complex computations and expensive hardware components to implement navigation solutions for the aircraft.